Ashes in Time
by BurntQueen
Summary: This just came into my head. I'm not sure if it will be a full story. I guess it could be. But it's nice the way it is too. Please read. It's basically a Twilight setting, with characters from mythology.
1. Chapter 1

Bruise-coloured mist swam sluggishly around my ankles. The raw smell of burning suffocated the air, and my lips pressed tight together. The pyres were cooled by now, and a thick, glittery dust coating the ground was all that remained of the victims. A dull 'pop' sounded behind me and I turned to look at the arrival, glad of a distraction from the ravaged battlefield. Unfortunately, the sibling standing there was perhaps the one I wanted least to see. He was wearing his customary form, a tall, bulky man, nondescript but for the scars running from temple to neck along his face. He had many names, but I preferred to call him Ares. His face showed horror and outright shock as he took in his surroundings.

"They lost?!" I was right, he was shocked. And unexpectedly, almost angry. My temper flared defensively as he glared accusingly at me.

"Of course they lost!" I sneered, perversely cruel. "This ridiculous alliance never stood a chance. The Volturi are too strong."

He looked bewildered. "They had ten times the numbers...ten times the strength..I don't - "

"If they'd had one hundred times the numbers it wouldn't have made a difference!" I was infuriated, not just by his misplaced blame but by his fool plan, and the grisly results scattered around the field. The choking scent of dead vampires was still heavy, even hours later, and it incensed me further. "The Volturi are too gifted. There was nothing your...revolutionaries, could have done against Jane or Alec. The Volturi only came in full strength to make a statement. If they had sent the witch twins alone it would have sufficed."

He curled his hands into fists, and the air around him shimmered like a heat haze. He was like a child, desperate to lash out but bereft of a target. I narrowed my eyes, discerning grief behind the red anger he had cloaked himself in, and was moved to pity despite everything. He had valued some of these vampires, looked at them as friends. That was the trouble with those creatures. They were a little more durable than humans, and more foolish Olympians would convince themselves the creatures were like us. Ares breathed out in a heavy sigh. "There was nothing I could have done."

My hands made fists now. Was he honestly going to acquit himself and throw a pity party after the destruction he has caused?

"You could have left well enough alone." I spat the words from gritted teeth. His head jerked up, and his eyes flamed crimson with anger. He took a step towards me, atoms of an ancient bronze xiphos gathering in his hand. I stood my ground, lifting an eyebrow as I waited for him to think better of this move. He had hardly hefted the sword when his arm fell back heavily to his side. He spoke softly, his tone uncharacteristically peaceable.

"It wasn't wrong. The Volturi needed to be stopped." He sounded like a tired, beaten old man.

"This," I swept an arm out at the carnage. "Was not the way to go about it."

He shook his head. "These stood a better chance than any had in millennia. Carlisle Cullen is - _was _inspirational. He was exactly the leader the vampires needed. So many flocked to him, believed in his vision." The calm in his eyes fractured into shards of pain. "He had so many talented on his own side...Benjamin was incredible, and Alice. I - "

"He had the wrong kinds of talents." I explained gently, feeling the urge to protect the younger brother I so rarely saw eye to eye with. "He had skilled offensives, but no way to protect his side against the Volturi's formidable collection."

Ares' brow furrowed slightly as he tried to trace the logic that was plain as day to me. "You're saying...he needed a shield? A shield who could...block other vampires' talents? Does such a thing exist?"

The wind changed, and for a moment the violet, diamond-flecked smoke swirled into our faces, then the chill air chased it across the field. "Almost." I answered. "It almost existed. The Cullens almost had it, too. A few chances just slid awry in the early 21st century, that's all." I darted a glance at him from my bright, knowing grey eyes. "Did you perhaps do something to offend Fortuna around then?"

I was surprised by his reaction. The vanquished surrenderer of moments ago was gone, his place taken by a shining young warrior on the cusp of battle, brilliant with fresh enthusiasm. "They would have won!" He...nearly _exulted_. I was taken aback, and disgusted. We were standing in what was essentially a graveyard of his own making. Hades' minions had only recently departed with the last of the souls. His joy was repugnant. He spun and grasped my shoulders, oblivious to my thoughts.

"Athene." He was urgent now, and persuasive, resplendent with the charisma of war. Flickers of WWII propaganda sprung to mind. "Athene, they could still win. You could do it."

"They have lost, brother." I laid a hand on his arm, intending to comfort, but he shook it off in his excitement.

"No. No, don't you see, it can be changed!" He gripped me tighter. "Speak with Chronos. I beg you. Athene, I rarely ask you for favours but please, do this."

My mind reeled. What he asked of me...I should not do it. It was against all the rules we set for ourselves. I steeled myself to refuse him and I made a mistake. My eyes roamed over the field, seeing the pyres grouped in pairs, vampires who had burned clinging to their mates, and settled on a solitary pyre apart from the rest. My resolve shattered and my decision shifted. I would try to change the past, and rewrite events already lived. But not for Ares and his war. Not even for the wise, gentle Carlisle Cullen. For the second time in my immortal life, I was going to dabble in the affairs of mortals for the sake of Elisabeth Masen's son.


	2. Chapter 2

Heavy woollen robes dragged round my ankles, and I felt uneasy and misplaced. The Underworld was grey to me, even in the Isle of the Blessed, the brightest of the afterlives. Immortals did not fit in this place of the dead. None but Hades, who was in his element, so to speak, and seemed to take a perverse pleasure in the discomfort of the rest of us. I could see, as though through a veil, the beautiful mountains and fields of Elysia, but it had none of the glittering splendour of Olympus or even the simple sweetness of mortal Earth.

"Grand-daughter." The voice was hoarse and cracked with disuse, and came from behind me. I turned and carefully hid my disgust and pity as I gazed on the bent, feeble remnants of the once-ruler of the Titans.

"Chronos." I infused my tone with precise amounts of affection and respect, neither of which the fallen deity inspired. It was hard to believe, looking at the wrecked shell in front of me, that _this_ had once waged war on the Olympian gods. Tartarus weakened him, I thought, but Zeus truly broke him when he dredged him up from the pit and made him subservient. The former king was now a 'pet' of his conquerors, allowed to watch over Isle of the Blessed by the grace of the children he had scorned. "I have come to ask something of you."

The old Titan wasted no words; conversation seemed to fatigue him and I wondered if he even had the strength to assist me. "What?"

"I need you to send me back in time," I told him simply. "To 2005. I need to change the past, to better the present."

"To meddle, you mean." His growl would have been intimidating, had he not fallen to coughing weakly immediately afterwards. He regained his breath and continued speaking. "In the affairs of mortals?"

"You assume correctly." I was neutral. His disapproval meant nothing to me.

"Humm." He coughed. "We took no part in their foolishness, when we ruled."

I refrained from commenting, wise enough to see that any reminder of his fall from grace would enrage him. He waited a moment, then snorted with hacking laughter. "Well, it's not like I'm in any position to refuse you, is it, Olympian?"

I could hear easily the bitter, undisguised hatred he wrapped around the word, but tamped down the emotion it stirred in me and locked my coldest grey stare on the Titan. "If you will help, you must help now."

His fragile body gradually stopped shaking. "You cannot contact any other gods, titans, lesser deities, demigods, any who may know you. You cannot allow any to know who you are, or that you have come from their future. To this end, you must use your godly powers sparingly."

I nodded elegantly. "All this I know."

"I shall endow you with enough of my own power to anchor you in that past for thirteen days. Then, your natural pull to your own time will reassert itself, and you shall be returned here."

I felt my brow crinkle as my eyebrows slanted. "Thirteen days will not be enough."

Chronos jeered, delighting in whatever petty inconvenience he could cause. "I cannot give you any more. Only thirteen days!"

He suddenly peered intently up at me from his stooped position, curiosity lighting deep in the cobwebbed depths of his rheumy eyes. "What is it you intend to do?"

I ignored the question, my brain whirring to solve the puzzle, as it always did. I flipped lightning-fast through possible solutions, discarding one after another until one showed promise. I met the eyes of the Father of Time.

"Can you give me thirteen days of my choosing? Thirteen disparate days of the past for me to 'meddle' in?"

He hunched lower into himself, his lips mumbling without sound. His spidery fingers flexed and clawed. "Maybe, maybe, Athene. You must choose your first day, the first day now. Then, when that sun sets, choose the next. Then the next and the next, for twelve sunsets. Do you understand?"

Of course I did. I plucked from my memory the first day I had to alter. "The 25th of December, 2004."

He shut his papery eyelids and stood immobile. His head snapped to the side, as if following a sound, and he seemed to watch something with his eyes closed. "I see it." He said softly. "Thirteen days, Athene. Trust me." He started to cackle. "You'll be back before you're gone!"

I sensed the sharp tug as he drew on his power, and I was caught in a hurricane I couldn't see or physically feel. The world seemed to stagger and almost fall around me, before righting itself. In the brief instant when everything was tilted, a figure stepped into my peripheral vision and then

* * *

I was standing exactly where I had been before, but Chronos was nowhere to be seen. I had successfully travelled through time and had returned to 2005, but I was instantly faced with a problem I would have foreseen, had I had more knowledge of the process of time travel. I now knew that I had moved temporally, but not physically and was still standing in Hades' realm. But it was years before I would ask his permission to enter, and I was supposed to avoid contact with other gods. I inhaled slowly, cringing at the dusty, stale scent of the Underworld and brushed my hair out of my eyes. Look at it like a puzzle, I told myself. The objective is to leave the Underworld without alerting Hades to your presence. The obstacles are the Underworld's defences, primarily Cerberus and Charon. My mind spun, weaving plans and answers and catching flaws and knots, until the pattern I needed revealed itself to me.


End file.
